Chapter Three: Social Cognition

Question 1

Automatic Thinking

Answer 1

Thinking that is non-conscious, unintentional, involuntary, and effortless

Question 2

Schemas

Answer 2

Mental structures people use to organize their knowledge about the social world around themselves and that influence the information people notice, think about, and remember

Question 3

Accessibility

Answer 3

The extent to which schemas and concepts are at the forefront of people’s minds and are, therefore, likely to be used when making judgments about the social world

Question 4

Priming

Answer 4

The process by which recent experiences increase the accessibility of a schema, trait or concept

Question 5

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Answer 5

The case whereby people have an expectation about what another person is like, which influences how they act toward that person, which, in turn, causes that person to behave consistently with their original expectations

Question 6

Judgmental Heuristics

Answer 6

Mental shortcuts people use to make judgments quickly and efficiently

Question 7

Availability Heuristic

Answer 7

A mental shortcut whereby people base a judgment on the ease with which they can bring information to mind

Question 8

Representative Heuristic

Answer 8

A mental shortcut whereby people classify something according to how similar it is to a typical case

Question 9

Base Rate Information

Answer 9

Information about the frequency of members of different categories in the population

Question 10

Analytic Thinking Style

Answer 10

A type of thinking in which people focus on the properties of objects without considering their surrounding context; this type of thinking is common in Western cultures

Question 11

Holistic Thinking Style

Answer 11

A type of thinking in which people focus on the overall context, particularly the ways in which objects relate to one another; this type of thinking is common in East Asian cultures

Question 12

Controlled Thinking

Answer 12

Thinking that is conscious, intentional, voluntary, and effortful

Question 13

Counterfactual Thinking

Answer 13

Mentally changing some aspect of the past as a way of imagining what might have been

Question 14

Overconfidence Barrier

Answer 14

People tend to have too much confidence in the accuracy of their judgments; their judgments are usually not as correct as they think they are